Julie Han made the trek to Italian Custom Tailors this summer to buy her father what she thought would be his last suit from Kenny Lim.
Earlier this year, 75-year-old Lim announced his plans to retire after 40 years in business. Han, whose family has been buying suits from the Koreatown tailor for about three decades, wanted to give her father the suit as a Father’s Day gift.
“We thought it was going to be my dad’s final suit with him,” Han said. “We were so sad about it.”
But Lim changed his mind.
He’s signed a three-year lease at Koreatown Galleria and will relocate to his new location in October. His current Wilshire Boulevard space will be redeveloped into a cafe.
The biggest reason he decided to keep working was simple.
“Customers, friends — everyone kept telling me, ‘You can’t retire. It would be a huge loss,'” Lim said. “Then I thought about it. If I retire, what am I going to do? I’ll travel for a few months, but after that? I don’t really have anything else to do.”
Lim’s three daughters all work in professional fields and have no interest in taking over the business. Although he had been thinking about retirement for years, signing another lease felt like the right decision.
“I figured I’d keep going for another three years,” he said.
The move to Koreatown Galleria also reflects how the business has changed over the years. His new shop will be about 1,600 square feet, much smaller than his current location.
“The market for custom tailoring has gotten much smaller,” Lim said. “Ready-made suits have become the standard.”
For Lim, the turning point came in the late 1990s. He said South Korea’s financial crisis brought a flood of ready-made suits from Korea, and many customers stopped buying custom clothing.
Nowadays, he said, a custom suit can cost three to four times as much as a ready-made one, making it a harder sell than it once was.
Today, only two Korean tailors remain in Koreatown, Lim said.
“I’m probably the youngest one,” he said. “Most of the others are already in their 80s.”
Before moving to the United States, he worked at a bank in Korea but wanted to build a new life in America. Thinking he needed a trade, he first tried learning auto repair before realizing it wasn’t for him. He switched to tailoring, worked under his older brother after immigrating in 1979 and eventually opened his own shop in Koreatown.
Lim opened Italian Custom Tailors in 1985 six years after immigrating from South Korea.
Since then, he has spent his entire career in the Wilshire corridor, first in a building next door before moving to his current storefront about 30 years ago.
Over those four decades, Lim has weathered some of Koreatown’s most difficult moments, including the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest. Although his shop was spared from the worst of the damage, he said looting reached neighboring businesses and he lost merchandise in the chaos as security crews rushed to move inventory.
“Back then, America didn’t even feel like America,” Lim said. “It was terrifying.”
Over four decades, Lim has watched generations of customers return to his shop.
“I’ve served three generations of some families,” he said. “Every customer has a history with me. I’m just grateful.”
Han’s family is one of them.
Her parents still drive from San Diego to buy suits from Lim. Her brother bought his first suit there before starting a career in banking because he thought it would bring him good luck. Lim also made her husband’s wedding tuxedo.
“I seriously remember coming in here with my parents and running around,” Han said. “I used to hide in his racks and stuff.”
Lim said those kinds of relationships have kept him motivated long after tailoring stopped being as common as it once was.
He remembers customers who flew in from Texas just to have suits made, as well as one longtime client who bought hundreds of custom suits over the years. Former Dodgers pitcher Park Chan-ho — the first South Korean-born player in Major League Baseball history — was also among his customers.
“The best part of this job is when customers are happy,” Lim said. “If they’re satisfied, I’m satisfied.”
Han said she left relieved after learning Lim wasn’t retiring after all.
“I’m glad he’s staying,” she said. “He’s too talented to retire.”
